Description:mc2 is a platform specifically built for the rapid prototyping of application-specific science gateways

Abstract:This virtual appliance provides a ready-to-run instance of the mc2 platform. The mc2 platform allows scientific application developers to rapidly implement and launch new science gateways. mc2 implements a gateway engine that can be configured by a small set of XML files. Such files completely define the desired functionality of an specific science gateway in the gateway engine. The gateway engine also offers other features not commonly found in related technologies, such as file sharing, data provenance tracking, and restricted anonymous access to underlying computational resources.
From the point of view of a scientific application developer, mc2 is a simple Web application that needs an ordinary Java Servlet container for its deployment. As a minimum, the mc2 platform creates instances of sciences gateways that offer Web interfaces for:
(i) uploading, downloading, viewing and editing files in the project area of the users,
(ii) submitting experiments, including validation tips on how to fill out the required experiment parameters, and
(iii) monitoring experiments, indicating their unique identifiers, in which computational resources the experiments are running and when they were submitted, among other information.
Currently, the mc2 platform is built upon the basic services for access control (OpenBus), execution management (OpenDreams) and data management (ProjectService) provided by the CSGrid middleware (https://jira.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/confluence/display/CSGrid/Home). Therefore, mc2 needs a running CSGrid instance to provide its functionalities.